Podcast

Recent Comments

About The IGF

IndieGames.com is presented by the UBM TechWeb Game Network, which runs the Independent Games Festival & Summit every year at Game Developers Conference. The company (producer of the Game Developers Conference series, Gamasutra.com and Game Developer magazine) established the Independent Games Festival in 1998 to encourage innovation in game development and to recognize the best independent game developers.

The following is a distilled version of Naramura-san's talk at GDC 2013, accompanied by his own hand-drawn slides from the presentation. Naramura-san’s presentation starts with a very interesting slide.

After Phil Fish's harsh criticism of Japanese gaming last year, Naramura decided to try and address it himself. The answer he came up was perhaps not what others expected: "Well said."

It seems like barely a week goes by these days when there isn't some new indie-based announcement from the Sony camp -- and today is no different, as the PlayStation Mobile development license has been waived.

Originally, those developers who wanted to release games via PS Mobile for PS Vita and PlayStation-certified mobile devices were required to pay an annual fee of $99.

Note that PlayStation Mobile is a C# platform that runs code on a virtual machine, providing direct binary compatibility across a range of devices. No doubt the number of titles being released for the platform will see a significant boost once Unity supports it.

Outside of Metal Gear Solid 3, No One Lives Forever and the Harry Tipper missions in the Timesplitters series, 50s/60s spy missions are not a common video game-setting. Dynamighty hopes to capitalize on this absence with CounterSpy, a side-scrolling take on Cold War-era espionage.

Andrew Parsons, director of publisher and developer relations for SCEE, explained that this new section of the store will provide indie titles with additional exposure, alongside the regular PSN channels.

The tradition of developer rants at GDC continues, with 2013's edition including OUYA head of developer relations Kellee Santiago, Eidos turned indie dev Anna Marsh, and Chris Hecker sharing what they feel is wrong with the industry.

Courtesy of the GDC Vault, this free, hour-long panel shows Santiago suggesting a Renaissance-like approach to help better and richer games to be made by people who could otherwise not afford to do so. Lady Shotgun's Marsh encourages more pre-production efforts to avoid crunch and says developers should experience life outside games to avoid otherwise incestuous ideas.

The ancient Greeks would have you believe Pandora made a huge mistake opening the box, but Chromatic Dream has turned her fabled moment into a positive one with their new multiplayer XBLIG title JamSouls.

Andy Schatz and Austin Wintory presenting on the music of Monaco at GDC

Austin Wintory, whose score for ThatGameCompany's Journey was nominated earlier this year for a Grammy Award, is among the most prolific composers working in independently developed games today. His swinging big band sounds for Leisure Suit Larry: Reloaded and orchestral pieces for The Banner Saga were both realized through the support of Kickstarter funding campaigns run by game industry veterans.

Sooo… I decided to make a game on a C64… And how did it go? Pretty awesome!

Making a game for a C64 and on PC is super simple and tons of fun! But Making a game on a real C64 is something else! One false move and BAH! your game is gone! There are no drives inside C64, everything that you are working on will die once you flip the power button. Moreover, there is no memory protection, so you can accidentally wipe out your code while it’s executing~!

The personal games movement is providing an important, exciting new avenue for expression and a new understanding of design, many believe. At the Different Games conference in New York this weekend, four panelists presented on the theme of personal game-making and why it matters to them.